Honcast Top 10 Community Poll (7/29)

Nick 'BreakyCPK' Caras at Thu, Jul 29, 2010 12:15 - PDT

HONCAST sent out a poll to the honcast staff and a couple of community representatives and here are the results.  Be sure to compare these results to the Stock Rankings over at http://www.konspiracy.org and with our last time rankings as well.  This time we bumped it up from 8 voters to 10 voters as the competitive scene has grown so we wanted to follow the trend.

Top 10 HoN Team Rankings for week of (7/29)

1.    {LOAD} Team Loaded – 97 (7) [ +1 ]

Team Loaded is back on top of the Honcast Community Rankings after being knocked down as low as fourth place due to disappointing performances and roster changes.  However, they are once again looking like the team we all remember from early beta with dominating performances despite having a near completely different roster.  With an impressive Honcast Invitational Tournament victory over Fnatic.MSI in the finals, they are also playing for the $3000 prize in the Newegg Tournament Finals as well.  Although not the unanimous decision to be the number one seed, it is hard to argue that they definitely deserve it.

2.    {MSI} Fnatic.MSI – 93 (3) [ -1 ]

So dropping from first to second this place around, obviously a big factor of that was the Honcast Invitational results with their 2-1 series loss to Loaded.  This did not stop three of the voters though from still insisting they deserve first place due to the circumstances and how impressive they have looked in other tournaments as well.  Although they were the victim of a recent upset to newcomers Never Back Down, they still consist of one of the most stable rosters in the competitive scene and will be sure to keep their strong run going for time to come.

3.    {Dwi} Deal With It – 68 [ +1 ]

Breaking into the top three now, Deal With it has slowly but deservingly been moving up in these Honcast Community Rankings for the last couple of months.  With their very solid performance in the Honcast Invitational defeating Kde in the first round 2-0 then taking MSI to a three game series, deal with it has kept that momentum going through other events as well.  However, with back to back losses to Team Loaded in two different tournaments, it is clear LOAD is the only team right now that Deal With It still struggles against.  But it wouldn't be to surprising if they finally reach over that hump, however continuing this hot streak of moving up going will be very difficult.

4.    {SK} SK-Gaming – 67 [ -1 ]

In what was a very close race for the third place spot, SK-Gaming unfortunately fell to fourth.  Although they played very strong against Team Loaded in the Honcast Invitational Semi-Finals taking them to three games, they were vulnerable to an upset themselves against xFin in the Newegg Tournament.  This upset definitely skewed vision of this team as of late and it is hard to get a true read as some matches they look unstoppable, and others they seem lack luster of trying.  Only time will tell if they can reach back to the glory days of them being the top team in the world in dominant fashion.

5.    {Kde} KD-Gaming – 65 [ 0 ]

For a team that was on such a high after the DreaHack Event being ranked number one, Kde has saw their stock drop big time.  They fell to the fifth spot last time around, however they were not able to do enough to dig themselves out.  To be fair, they haven't had much opportunity to move back up in the rankings but as you can see by the numbers it still was very close.  KD-Gaming does have several opportunities coming up with many tournaments so pending on those we will be able to get more of an idea of whether or not they clearly deserve to move up.

6.    {Empr} Empire Gaming – 45 [ 0 ]

Always a very entertaining team, they kept that going these last couple of weeks but were never matched up against any of the “elite” teams.  So they stayed with the number six spot, however they did go 3-0 in Newerth League including a very impressive victory over tSm.    Just like many others, these next couple of weeks will determine a lot pending how they do as they should find themselves matched up against the top 5 and could try to make that move they have been looking for.

7.    {NvD} Never Back Down – 43 [ New ]

So these are the new kids on the block.  Never Back Down jumped onto the scene with a very impressive win over arguably the number two seeded Fnatic.MSI team.  Yes, some can call it a fluke and we have seem upsets in the past many times as well that have resulted in flops, but there is something about NvD that stands out.  Their teamwork and individual skill is that of a team it is hard to see going away any time soon, but at the same time we really don't have a big sample size.  So perhaps the most anticipated team to watch these next couple of weeks, don't be surprised if they break into the top 5 come next time around, however it could just as easily go the other way.

8.    {tSm} Tease Em – 21 [ 0 ]

Once again one of the longest lasting teams in Heroes of Newerth competitive history, they still have shown that they really can compete.  Although both losses to SK and LOAD this last week, they looked very good in both games, but have found themselves being on the losing end all to often.  Maybe that is just who this team is and we never really will see them break into the true elite teams, however being in the top 10 overall is something you can count on every Honcast Community Rankings as long as they keep this play up.

9.    {xFin}  Finale – 19 [ New ]

Being on the Honcast Community Rankings before, they fell off recently only to now find themselves back on at the number nine spot.  Obviously, the big reason for this is because of their recent upset come from behind victory over SK-Gaming in the Newegg Tournament.  But they have also looked very sloppy since then in other performances against newcomers EzPz and NvD and it really made for a diverse placement in voting between polls.

10.    {TsoG} TS-Gaming – 10 [ 0 ]

Squeaking in once again at the number ten spot, TS-Gaming is still considered a solid team.  However they have a lot of work to do if they want to prove their worth, as really their only impressive match up lately resulted in a disappointing loss to Kde in a 2-0 sweep.  They hadn't been doing a whole lot come competitive play due to schedule conflicts as of late, so maybe it is just rust, but with them going to China soon to represent Sweden you know that they are going to look to better themselves ten fold.

Teams just off the list; iLx (8), DrDz (7), EzPz (4), unZ (3), PvX (1)

*() = Number of 1st place votes
**[] = Spaces moved from previous list
*** Points were given on a 1-10 scale, 1st place granted 10 points and 10th granted 1 point.